Friday, February 26, 2016

Kyiv Says Moscow Creating New Army Corps Manned by ‘Exclusively’ by Ukrainian Citizens

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 26 – Valentin Fedichev,
the head of the Ukrainian defense ministry’s department for social and
humanitarian policy, says that the Russian military is “forming a third army
corps and including in its “exclusively Ukrainian citizens.”To date, he adds, some 5,000 have signed up.

Such a unit, if it is actually being
formed and there is as yet no confirmation, could play introduce a troubling
new element in the Ukrainian conflict, possibly allowing Moscow to launch a
larger invasion of Ukraine but portraying it in a way that some might find
plausible as the actions not of the Russian military but of a “Ukrainian” unit
instead.

Fedichev made this statement on Kyiv’s
Hroms’ke television station, and one Russian commentator has suggested that
Ukraine has only itself to blame for such a development, noting that the
Ukrainian defense ministry has dismissed “thousands” of soldiers it deems
unreliable and that many of these may still want to fight (versia.ru/rossiya-formiruet-armejskij-korpus-iz-grazhdan-ukrainy).

While Fedichev’s remarks are
unconfirmed and certain to be denied by Russian officials who would find it
easy to hide the formation of such a unit or units at least in the initial
stages, the formation of such “a corps” would be consistent with what Moscow is
already doing in Belarus.

There, Russian activists are working
to form pro-Moscow paramilitary groups that could be used against Mensk at some
point.Like similar forces in the
Donbas, these groups are armed and promote a mix of Soviet, Orthodox Christian,
and Russian imperialist ideology. (For an extensive new report on these groups see
charter97.org/ru/news/2016/2/26/192839/.).